It was a good weekend here in many ways. For one, it was windy so I couldn't do anything in the yard. The wind mostly took care of many of the remaining leaves. The end is in sight for my autumn leaf blowing work. We attended a memorial service for a hunting and fishing buddy of Chris' who was well known as a long-time high school coach in Richmond. He was the high school coach for a current NFL quarterback and he received wonderful tributes from that player and so many other people he touched in his life. It was really lovely. On Sunday we delivered brownies of a couple of friends. For some reason, people really love my gluten-free/vegan brownies. I don't think it's the recipe. It has more to do with the $10 of specialty cocoa that I use in each batch. I love delivering them to people who need a little pickup. The funny thing is that I don't love them as much as everyone else. I prefer chocolate chip or peanut butter cookies. I still had a lot of making time in the weekend and one project I finished is this wheelchair lap blanket that I will donate to From The Heart. You might remember all the blankets that I've been making for the men in my life. They all use Cascade Cartwheel yarn. I don't like having leftover yarn bits so as I finished each blanket I added it to a corner-to-corner blanket project. It actually started with the blue in the upper right corner. That was the first blanket I made with this yarn and it was also a corner-to-corner wheelchair blanket. I used the leftovers to start this blanket. I fell in love with the yarn on that project and then I bought tons of it on sale, and as I've finished each blanket, this blanket has been growing. I thought it was going to be kind of ugly and thought it might end up being a pet blanket. But, now that it's done, I think it's kind of pretty. It's about 27" x 36". I also got all of the pieces for the holly cards cut out. I think I even have the ideas for the 2 other designs. I want to get the pieces cut and fused for all of the cards by Sunday so I can take them to the river and do the stitching next week. Then I did some quilting! Both of these veterans quilts were made by Carla. I really like both of them, especially the bandana fabric. They are quilted with the square spiral pantograph in red thread. Next up is this quilt that my friend Kim made for a friend. Her friend is starting cancer treatment soon so I want to get this one done quickly so she can send it off before treatment starts. I'm almost halfway done and hope that I can finish it before the Eagles game tonight.
This week involves a doctor's appointment (physical) and Thanksgiving at my brother's. All I have to prepare is a batch of cookies. Chris has to make 2 pies. I'm sure the only reason we are invited is for Chris' apple pies! He's famous among our friends and family for his apple pies. Today and tomorrow I want to finish this quilt and work on the postcards. Those are my main goals. It was a beautiful weekend here in Virginia and, of course, I did a lot more leaf blowing. But we also had a fun sewing weekend and I got to reconnect with a friend I hadn't seen in over 10 years. Also, the Eagles squeaked out a win so the weekend was a big success! On the quilting front, everything was all about veterans quilts. I'm really happy to be back to quilting them. They are quick and stressless. These two were brought to me by Ramona. I love the bright geese in this one. I could see making this in my Shades Packs or a Gradient. I decided on just a touch of custom on the geese. It was very fast to quilt. This next one also came from Ramona and I find it really soothing. I quilted this one with the Square Spiral pantograph. This is the top that I pieced at sewing this weekend. It's one of the kits that I had pre-cut over a year ago. I only have two kits left so this Spring I will need to cut a lot more kits. I really like that approach. It makes getting ready for the sewing weekends very easy. The blue fabrics in this quilt are all from the remnants of dyed veterans quilt backs. I save all of the excess fabric and try to use it in other veterans quilts. The color fabrics are hand dyes from my stash. I really like how this looks but it was kind of hard to piece. I had way too much trouble keeping my fabrics in order! But even with all of the unsewing, I pieced the whole thing in 2 days (about 7 hours). I got the next 2 veterans quilts loaded for quilting. Both of these were pieced by Clara. I'm trying to decide between red and blue thread but I will not get to quilting these until next week.
Tomorrow I will work the voting precinct all day. We will setup tonight and will be there tomorrow from 5:00 am until about 8:30 pm. It's a long day but I really enjoy it. Then Wednesday morning I'm going to the beach! My friend, Kim, got a beach house for the week and invited me to join her. I'll pack up the blue quilt and some crochet and head out early Wednesday. I'll post from there but probably will not post again until Thursday. I don't have a newsletter today because I didn't get to do any dyeing last week so today I'm sharing the progress on the Paula quilt. I got it pieced this weekend and quilted yesterday! All I have left is the binding, a sleeve and a label. I might get it bound today after my dentist appointment and some errands. I can't wait to show you this in full color in early November because it's bright! The sashing and border are gray prints but everything else is very bright. This will eventually be a quilt to be donated to the veterans hospital so when I quilted it I used the backing and batting that our quilt club purchases and I needed another quilt to tp pair it with. I was using a gray backing and black thread and Gwendolyn's quilt fit perfectly.
So, at least I've finished one thing! Thank you to Cheryl B-J for sending us these two lovely quilts for our veterans quilt project! I got the quilting finished Tuesday so I could take them to the meeting Tuesday night and got two volunteers to do the binding. These will be ready for our veterans soon! Quilts based on 12"blocks always seem to make really nice quilts and these are no exception. I quilted both with my favorite patriotic star and ribbon motif. I've probably quilted that pantograph about 100 times! I might need to start looking for a new patriotic pantograph just to have something new and different.
We gladly accept donated tops for our project. The optimal size is 48" x 60". Since most of these go to cancer and dialysis patients, this is the perfect size for them to take with them when they are getting treatments. You can contact me if you want to donate a top and I'll give you the details. Who knew that orange could be a neutral? This is my last finish before vacation. This is also a veterans quilt and I love it. I really enjoy making these quilts. I can piece a top in one weekend if I have the strings and foundations already cut. You just have to remember that half the blocks need to have the diagonal in the opposite direction. I didn't pay attention to my block count when I made this quilt so I had to remake one block. I know that orange isn't appealing to everyone but it's my happy color and I love it in this quilt. In between travel preps, Chris and I got in some kayaking one evening. It was beautiful out on the lake.
We leave today for a 2-day drive to Maine. I probably won't post again until Monday. It may look like one quilt here but you'll see below that I made 2 identical quilts. I cut out veterans quilt kits all at one time and they usually hold me for a year or more. I had enough of these fabrics to make 2. I worked on piecing them over 3 months of quilt club sewing days and got them quilted and bound this weekend. I really like the look of this quilt and will likely make more in the future. See, I did make 2! I also got 4 quilts ready for the quilt exhibit in September. One of them is Mom's. Three of them needed labels and 2 needed sleeves. Luckily, I had 4 hanging rods just the right size! I really wanted to get these ready before I leave so I didn't have to worry about if after vacation.
Otherwise, it's just laundry, packing and a little evening crochet going on here this week. Neither Mom or I wanted to talk about or do anything related to her move yesterday. She got a day of rest and I got a day of yarn and thread. Yesterday afternoon I went to crochet with the local library group. I finished a winter hat that I started last month and then added the leftover yarn to my scrappy blanket. Whatever project I finish I add the leftover yarn to this blanket. It can probably be donated as a wheelchair blanket whenever it gets finished. The most important thing is that I don't have scrap balls of yarn. Then after dinner I got buys and got the veterans quilts quilted. I think I can get the last one loaded and quilted before we leave and might even be able to get one or more of them bound.....we'll see. I'm not making myself commit to it. Gail left a comment on the last post asking if there's a pattern for this quilt so I thought I'd share my "pattern" here. It's just a simple sashed quilt that I mocked up in EQ. The blocks are 12" finished so they are based on a 4" grid. The red and white could be cut from jelly roll strips (2.5"). The sashing and borders are all 3" finished. Ignore my diagram, I also made the top and bottom borders 3".
Gail, I hope this is enough to help you draft it out yourself. It's pretty straight forward. I hope everyone had a great weekend! It was sewing weekend with my quilt club and that means I worked on a veterans quilt. This time I made blocks using scraps from all of my Paula Nadelstern projects. I love string blocks! The veterans quilts are 48 x 60 so I make my blocks to finish 8" x 10" so that I get 3 diamonds across and down. These were easy to sew and I got all the blocks done by the time we wrapped up Saturday afternoon. But with this approach you have to be careful to do half of the blocks angled left to right and half the other way. I was so close to being done that I decided to keep going when I got home. I trimmed and layed out all the blocks and got this. Oops! That was enough for Saturday. Yesterday Chris left for a bucket list trip to Alaska to go fishing and my friend Kim came over to hang out and sew for a few days. The first thing I did was make a new block and get this top put together. I love it! It's in the to-be-quilted closet awaiting it's turn on the longarm. Kim is working on a quilt project of her own. This one is called Scrapbooking or something like that. I'll show you when there are more blocks but I think it's going to be really cute. After I finished my quilt top I didn't really want to dig into something else so I decided to clear out the bags of batting scraps. I had enough for 7 pet beds to donate to Richmond Animal League. The are all different sizes because I use whatever fabric I get for free and make as big a bed as I can from the fabric. Different sizes for different animals.
That's one more item checked off my July goals list! Today Kim is going to work on her quilt more and I'm not sure what I'm doing but I might start planning my project(s) for Maine or I might start some placemats for my brother. The Goldfinch quilting will come this weekend after Kim leaves. I really enjoy working the voting precinct on election days and this time we had a particularly great crew. Our chief was serving her first stint as chief and she was fabulously organized. Two of my former coworkers were also volunteers. There were only 2 downsides: I had to get up at 4 am and the day was SLOW. We have a small precinct anyway, at 1444 registered voters, and this was just a Republican House of Delegates primary with a very popular incumbent. We knew the turnout was going to be low and were expecting about 5%. In the end we got about 12%, not counting early and absentee voters. That's a good turnout but it was still slow! But, on the upside, I was able to finish one chemo hat, start and finish a man's winter hat and start one more. I don't like to waste time! I have some single skeins 4 weight yarns that I want to use and I'm finding that using 2 strands in my favorite bulky man's hat pattern is a great way to work through them. In November we should be much busier with Virginia Senate and Delegate elections. I've been slowly plugging away at the crochet. I'm not doing a lot because I've been working on the Goldfinch and, frankly, it's kind of warm to be crocheting a big blanket. But I'm slowly making progress on this one. I'm on ball 5 of 7. I made this one a tad narrower than the others so it might not use all 7 balls. I love how the baby blanket is looking. I just have one more white stripe section and then the border to do. This one is turning out a little big so it might be a toddler blanket. I'll let the charity decide but it should be done soon. To be perfectly honest, one reason that I haven't been crocheting is that I'm avoiding this project. I work on my projects alternately and I dread working on this because I dont think I'm going to like it. My SIL had convinced me to finish it anyway but she' not here to stay on me and I've lost interest again. I've decided to shelve it for now and work on the one garment that I really want to make, another hexie cardigan for winter. I ordered the yarn I want to use and will get started as soon as it arrives. The new one will be dark purple and I'm giving the blue one to Mom. Now I'm excited to crochet again. I also started last night on the next section of the Goldfinch.
Most of my sewing time this weekend was at quilt club and I was able to finish these 2 veterans quilt tops. I've been working on them at sewing days since April. I'm really happy with them and for now they will hang in the to-be-quilted closet. But once they are quilted they will get red binding. I also got 2 more veterans quilts quilted. This makes 6 for the month and that was my goal. For the next few weeks I'll work on some other projects on the longarm and give the veterans quilts a rest. Betsy made both of these quilts. She loves little pieces, red and reproduction fabrics and her quilts are always very graphic. This one is a double 4-patch. The Woven Wind pantograph is a really easy and fast one. This one is also Betsy's. This is the third one I quilted for her. She's very prolific! This one is unique because the block is rectangular. I also got in a little time on the Goldfinch quilt. This type of pattern isn't for everyone but I'm enjoying it so far.
But I'm taking another detour the next day or so. I'm going to try to get a hiking backpack made before we go on a long hike Wednesday. I'm making it from an old pair of hiking pants. I have a vague idea of what I want it to be but I have a lot of details to work out. |
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I'm Vicki Welsh and I've been making things as long as I can remember. I used to be a garment maker but transitioned to quilts about 20 years ago. Currently I'm into fabric dyeing, quilting, Zentangle, fabric postcards, fused glass and mosaic. I document my adventures here. Categories
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